


Perhaps the World Ends Here

by brokenmemento



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Developing Relationship, End of the World, F/F, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23316964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Looking out the window to her (old) bedroom, it’s hard to imagine that life has upended itself, that it’s no longer the same. By all accounts, everything looks pretty much the way it always has. There is a key difference though...
Relationships: Frankie Bergstein & Grace Hanson, Frankie Bergstein/Grace Hanson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	Perhaps the World Ends Here

**Author's Note:**

> This is my bittersweet response to what is going on in the world today. I was inspired by the idea on Facebook, believe it or not. I became enthralled with the idea of how our favorite octogenarians would handle this based on everything they had seen in their lifetime. Hopefully, it isn't too melancholy of a read.
> 
> **Title taken from the poem of the same name by Joy Harjo. I also "borrowed" the silver oyster line from one of my favorite novel-to-movie adaptations, The Book Thief.

_“When the world ends_

_Collect your things_

_You're coming with me_

_When the world ends_

_You tuckle up yourself with me_

_Watch it as the stars disappear to nothing_

_The day the world is over_

_We'll be lying in bed”_ -Dave Matthews Band

****************************

She’s seen a lot of shit in her time. Even though she was only three when the United States entered the war, she still remembers her mother making her and her siblings practice hiding under tables in case there was ever an air raid. 

“Now, Grace Pauline, you keep your head down and voice quiet. That’s to listen for any airplanes.”

Her voice is still crystal clear in Grace’s mind, the phantom voice of it echoing from long ago. She’d had nightmares for the next four years. It’s why, a lifetime later, she’d refused to join Frankie under the table during the tremors of the earthquake. They live near the San Andreas fault for god's sake. She had decided way before that that she had done enough huddling underneath furniture to last her a lifetime. 

That's why, when their sixth year together, or 2020, arrives, she’s flabbergasted that the world feels like it’s hung, a needle dragging on a record to a song she’s already heard way too many times. 

Looking out the window to her (old) bedroom, it’s hard to imagine that life has upended itself, that it’s no longer the same. The sun is still shining from the cloudless San Diego sky, the gulls swoop in wide arching loops down toward the water, and the seals can be faintly heard down the beach. 

By all accounts, everything looks pretty much the way it always has. The key difference though is the foot traffic. 

When the news of it first reaches airwaves, it barely registers as a blip on her radar. She’s moving her things back into the beach house, going back and forth to the lawyer’s office to sign papers, gritting her teeth through meals with Robert and Sol, one big happy family like they never were. 

It’s because of these things that she doesn’t notice the flock of people, almost like a surging tidal wave, and then their disappearance completely. It’s as if she wakes up one day and sees the sand eerily devoid of any human life. That’s when she starts counting. 

She wakes up every morning, answers her emails with a steaming cup of coffee, and makes her way to the window all before Frankie ever gets up. By the time Frankie inevitably manages to appear, Grace has suffered through a breakfast of small talk and heart eyes between their newest housemates. 

“What are you doing all by your lonesome up here,” Frankie asks and Grace feels a feather-light touch to the small of her back. She stills her body from trying to roll her hips into it.

“Social distancing,” Grace answers wryly and Frankie scoffs behind her. 

“Our two favorite bozos driving you up the wall again?” 

Grace looks out the window, feels the impact of everything hit her in the chest. She’s never thought of herself as a social creature, has always prided herself on trying to go it alone. Somehow, she’s always been hanging onto something though, always connected to someone.

Frankie touches her lightly when she doesn’t answer. Grace knows she’s been tethered to the wrong people all along. 

“Have you noticed the beach? One day, there were all of these people. Now, there is no one,” Grace says sadly and without any knowledge at all that it would be her tone when it came out. 

She feels as Frankie steps into her, presses their bodies together with the same lightness of her earlier touches, the fluttering weightlessness that Grace feels in her chest. Her voice is soft, quiet even, as she speaks into Grace’s ear. “I didn’t think you much like people anyway.”

It’s not meant to zing or sting, so Grace doesn’t take it as such. Her entire life, she’s taken people for what she‘s wanted of them. For warmth, for challenge, for the feel of them in dark places when needed. Never for love. Never for the need of them, only want. Now, she wants so much and there is only one way to ease. 

“Maybe they mean more than I thought they did,” Grace shrugs, a not so thinly veiled reference between their two hearts. 

She's finally given up on Nick, who never managed to quite reach her heart in the way he should. Sure, she loved him, but it was the kind that tasted artificial, not authentic. Not the deep, bare-bones type of love partners should have. Not the kind she’s only felt whispers of, echoes against her rib cage. 

“Move in with me,” Frankie says like it’s nothing at all. Casual, unimportant even. The kind of voice used for taking out the garbage or telling someone they’re on their fourth Del Taco run of the day. An average kind of request in a regular kind of tone.

“In the studio,” Grace turns and faces Frankie. 

“No, in my Leaf. Of course, in the studio,” Frankie rolls her eyes. The afternoon sun casts light across her face, makes her irises look like sea glass. Grace’s heart thumps like wild wind. 

The world eventually turns even further on its end. Grace has given up on the television, rarely leaves the studio to seek out news. Instead, she looks over the perch of her glasses on her nose, blanket and book on her lap as she sits on the couch and watches Frankie paint. 

California is confined, locked down from life. Grace hardly ventures past the maroon threshold of the door. If Sol and Robert wonder why she’s taken to the exterior of the main house, they do not ask. 

Their sleeping arrangements are makeshift but perfect. Each night, they meet on the twin mattresses, talk little about what’s going on. It’s the elephant in the room, a foot against a chest, something caged and desperate to come out. 

Grace waits Frankie out, wants so desperately to talk about how it feels to make it through eight decades and not be sure they’ll see the next year. About how she wants to stand guard to the outside, to not let the phantoms creep in and take them both away. 

Frankie is a surprise, not having to be pulled down from climbing the walls or reduced to a sternum rubbing ball. She’s oddly fucking zen and Grace can’t figure out why. 

It’s twilight when they’re laying down, summer air tickling the beads of sweat on their skin. Above, the fan turns lazily. Moving but not really doing much. 

“I never thought I’d say this, but now might be the time to visit your stash of weed,” Grace sighs out. Boredom tinges her words. 

“This may shock you to hear, Grace, but it’s not medicinal,” Frankie says rather seriously. “I can’t leave to meet my plug. And I don’t think he’s making house calls.”

Grace sits up then, looks down at the splay of Frankie’s curls across the waning crispness of the white sheets. “We’re over 80. Surely _something_ hurts for you to be able to get a prescription?” Her face crumples a bit. “And since when do you call your weed guy a ‘plug’.” 

Frankie closes her eyes and folds her hands across her chest. She blows a puff of air upward, ruffles a few stray strands of hair. “Times are changing, darlin’.” 

She reaches for Grace’s hand nearby, moves the thin skin of their fingers against one another. Somehow, they fall asleep against the flow of time, against one another. Grace’s slumber is hot and dreamless, a blank seam in the fabric of her time. 

The day dawns mercifully gray, soft patters of interspersed droplets tinkling against the glass. It wakes Grace and she rolls onto her stomach, peers up at the still faint light. Flopping her head back onto the pillow, she looks over to Frankie who is watching her bleary-eyed. 

“Why haven’t we talked about any of this,” Grace finally says with a wave of her hand around. An explanation in and of itself. “We talk about everything. Your yogurt shop friends, the time every single one of your yurts exploded, the way you have even…” she trails off. Her cheeks pink a little. “With Vybrant,” she tries again. “But not this.”

Grace rolls onto her back then, casts her eyes heavenward. The rain hitting the window is the only sound in the room, that is until Frankie fills it with the rustling shuffle of her body, the expulsion of air. She’s above Grace now, looking down with things Grace can’t even begin to touch. 

“I feel like the world is ending,” Frankie admits. Grace sucks in a breath and never gets it back because Frankie’s lips are on her then, kissing away any prospect of oxygen returning. 

No, no, _no_ is all Grace can think because _not like this_. It was never supposed to happen with shelter in place and invisible harm beyond their very door. It’s not supposed to occur with death bouncing on winged feet from place to place and throwing souls on its back by thousands fold. 

Grace is supposed to kiss her on the porch one night, cushions supporting their aging bodies and lips gliding easily across one another. She’s meant to kiss her over a container of bad Indian food and Ray Donovan. Beside their pool with the moonlight glittering off the water. Beside the ocean waves with the sea air in their hair and hands gripped tightly together. 

A hand stills Frankie against her, her own rogue and rebellious by bringing her concerns into real life. “Frankie…”

“Please, don’t make me stop, Grace,” Frankie pleads with eyes closed. 

“I don’t want you to be doing this because you think we don’t have more time together or that things aren’t fixable out there.” Grace jabs a thumb to the window where everything looks normal. A false look on the world. 

“I would have done it anyway,” Frankie shrugs, frowns. “Eventually.” 

“You’re being awfully cavalier about all of this,” Grace points out with a raised eyebrow. There’s no middle ground with Frankie it seems. It’s either hiding under tables or laying on puffy pillows with no bra and chill vibes. “I mean, you just kissed me.”

“Okay, so yeah. Maybe we can blame a virus for speeding up the process or giving me balls or however you want to think about it, but it won’t change the truth. That I’ve wanted to do that every day for the last three years. Well, five,” Frankie grouses a little. 

“Oh, Frankie,” Grace says and then is on top of her. 

She hasn’t felt Frankie like this since the floor, hasn’t been both petrified and revelous of the way their bodies curve and dip in just the right ways to encompass each other since then. It seems wanton to need this too, to have the world ending according to Frankie and need her as badly as she’s needed anything in her entire life. 

Grace dips with the same care of a first kiss, of a nervous intention coming to fruition, even though they’ve already come together mere moments ago. She makes sure to take a bit of Frankie’s lip with her mouth, taste her so she can internalize it on a shelf within her forever. 

With it, Grace continues the first one in a line of many. 

They kiss slowly because Grace makes Frankie wait for it a little, slows them down because the world is still turning. She does so with her hands underneath Frankie’s clothes, traces soft-skinned crop circles across her body. Grace kisses her into midday, the silver oyster morning not looking much different hours later. 

Frankie presses her against the windowpane, painters fingers ducking and emerging in strokes, kisses her neck and then makes a shoulder bare to press her lips against too. She makes Grace forget the see-through glass, a world with no one waiting to look in anyway. Frankie helps Grace develop hope that somewhere out there, where there are actually people too, they’re getting to do this and feel as unfurled in their sequestered state as they are. 

A shirt later or maybe a discarded tunic there, they stand together and look out, a world lying in wait. The unspoken want of rejoining together on both of their minds. 

“It isn’t ending,” Grace says firmly, almost sure of herself. She rests her forehead against the back of Frankie’s neck, inhales the scent of her skin there. “It can’t.” _Not when we’ve just found each other like this._

“Maybe you’re right,” Frankie finally agrees. “Us old broads have managed to make it this long. What’re another ten years? I’m game.”

Grace laughs now into her skin, presses her face against her. Gripping her hip, she turns Frankie slowly. Their eyes meet, a different look than the way they’ve always seen each other. But then again, it could be the way they’ve always been meant to, too. 

Life glitters amongst a backdrop of uncertainty. Grace doesn’t know what tomorrow holds but knows she’s got Frankie in it. She kisses her again, years of love stacking to fill her mouth. The people will come again. Grace will keep doing this until they do.


End file.
